Google close to deal with FTC: May fob off probe with 'tweaks' - report

inevitable result...

...because there's a limit to what pressure even the US government can bring if the evidence isn't there. However much they'd like to help out Googles competition, without a thick enough veneer of consumer harm it can't survive legal challenge... and the self serving complaints seen so far haven't done well showing consumers are being harmed at all.

In the case of Fairsearch consumers are arguably being helped by keeping the bottom feeders out of search results!

I look forward to finding out how little Google concedes to let the FTC save face.

I would say I am surprise but I am not, I predicted precisely this result, an most people outside of the media and Microsoft lobbies predicted the same results, a few tweaks here and there and that all. I suspect FTC will come to similar arrangements with anyone else thinking about using their FRAND patents in the patent wars as well.

There was just to many barriers for the FTC to overcome, down to the powers the FTC, right up to constitutional arguments about whether search results are protected by freedom of speech.